A
system glorifies its winners. The mass media and the rest of corporate
America are enthralled with professionals scaling career ladders to new
heights. Meanwhile, the people hanging onto bottom rungs are scarcely blips
on screens.

Far from the media
spotlights are countless lives beset with financial scarcity, often in
tandem with chronic illness, monotony, adversity and despair. The same
institutions and attitudes that lavish outsized respect on high achievers
(the wealthier the better) are apt to convey ongoing disrespect for low
achievers.

The flip side of adulation
for winners is often contempt for people with cumulative misfortune, who
routinely slog through murky quasi-netherworlds and do their best to keep
from going under. According to mass-media calculations, they just don't
rate. In a society overdosing on unmitigated capitalism, it's not just a
matter of scant disposable income. As a practical matter, the country treats
many people as disposable.

When personal dreams of
success or even equilibrium sink below horizons, the same media outlets that
laud the successful have little use for those defined by the system as
abject failures. For mainstream media, the plentiful underachievers are
customarily the rough equivalent of flotsam and jetsam.

The downwardly un-mobile
may pump gas, wash dishes, trim hedges or do any number of other low-pay
no-benefit jobs. They might rent a tiny run-down apartment, sleep in charity
shelters or bed down on urban cement; they may wait in emergency rooms or
clinics, merely shaking their heads at the immediate question that prompts
most Americans to show medical-insurance cards.

In human terms, they may be
the salt of the earth, but the corporate-driven system commonly treats them
like dirt. And for many of those who've been on a downward spiral for a long
time, there's not the slightest whiff of a happy ending. Media disdain for
such lives is most vehemently expressed by ignoring them; in the routine
calculus of the newsroom, non-persons get non-coverage.

If you see the new movie
"The Assassination of Richard Nixon," you might feel compelled to think
again about such matters -- and maybe in a new way. Inspired by a real
person named Samuel Byck who went through a personal meltdown 30 years ago,
this stunning film makes more difficult our usual psychological evasions
about people whose failures include inability to pull themselves out of
tailspins.

You may never see a more
powerful performance on a screen than the one in this movie by Sean Penn.
(Full disclosure: He's a friend.) I agree with Newsday reviewer Jan Stuart,
who wrote that the film is "a triumph for its star and the writers, who make
us cringe with empathy for a man who taps into the latent loser in all of
us."

It isn't just that we would
rather not contemplate the dire circumstances of others. We also would
prefer not to look too closely at the thin ice that is underfoot for us all.
Even the most secure have no guarantees of health, stability or longevity.

While reviews across the
country are almost unanimous with praise for Sean Penn's superb acting in
"The Assassination of Richard Nixon," their reactions to the overall film
have ranged from acclaim to indifference. The discomfort of some reviewers
seems to be intertwined with wariness about the movie's great empathy for
someone who can't win.

The marriage that the
film's main character desperately wants to glue back together has cracked up
beyond repair. The political economy that he hopes will welcome and reward
his honest work has no use for him. All the outward signposts tell us that
he's headed toward the system's destination for what it treats as expendable
-- the equivalent of corporate road kill. And his mental deterioration leads
him to engage in terrible violence.

Director Niels Mueller, who
co-wrote "The Assassination of Richard Nixon" with Kevin Kennedy, has
brought to the screen a work of creativity that finds politics in humanity.
Given its acute sensibilities, the film is remarkable enough to represent a
bit of a cinematic miracle.

Maybe fuller realization of
vulnerabilities that are inherent in the human condition -- and exacerbated
by predatory social orders -- can bring more genuine humility and deeper
compassion.